Television: today's pick
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Your support makes all the difference.The Hunt (9pm BBC2) With the current debate about fox-hunting generating more heat than light, this fine, dispassionate documentary from the Under the Sun strand is a breath of fresh air. Nick Coppen spent one season with the Ludlow Hunt, one of the 200 or so in Britain. His film captures the daily hard work of organisation, as well as the beauty of the horses and hounds in full flight. Close up and it's less pretty, of course. Coppen doesn't shy away from the more distressing images - a retired hound being shot (after a lifetime of pulling foxes to bits, they can't be kept as pets), farm animals being skinned (a secondary, money-raising role for the hunt), as well as the fate of the fox, the majority of which go to earth - finished off by spade, terrier and revolver.
Before They Were Famous II (9.40pm BBC1) Enjoyable sequel to Angus Deayton's trawl of pre-stardom footage. Highlights this time include a young Tony Blair losing his deposit, Slade as a bizarre bovver-boy folk combo, Casualty's Charlie as a teenage pop star, Jonathan Ross in a Rice Krispies advert, and, best of all, Martin Clunes as a very Eddie Izzardish Dr Who villain.
THe film
Gone with the Wind (7.10pm C5) "Frankly my dear..." Go on, lip-sync your way through what is probably the most popular movie of all time, as legendary for its making as for what ended up on the screen. David O Selznick's production of Margaret Mitchell's Civil War epic, starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, came with a long list of victims - notably director George Cukor, who was replaced by Victor Fleming (who in turn had a nervous breakdown). Fleming's sequences may be more prosaic than Cukor's, but at least he got the damned thing finished.
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